Jaye Jayle

The project of singer/guitarist Evan Patterson, Jaye Jayle's gritty version of Americana is the foundation for his wide-ranging and gripping experiments. Initially steeped in folk and blues, Jaye Jayle's dusty, haunted sound came into its own on 2016's stripped-down House Cricks and Other Excuses to Get Out. Patterson added more dimensions to the project's contrasts of the traditional and the cutting edge with the avant-garde production of 2018's No Trail and Other Unholy Paths and 2020's entirely electronic Prisyn. He further honed his gifts as a storyteller and sound-shaper on 2023's Don't Let Your Love Life Get You Down and 2025's After Alter, which combined the rustic and futuristic aspects of Jaye Jayle's music with a heroic dose of heartache.Patterson began playing guitar at an early age, and rebelled against the conservatism of his hometown of Elizabethtown, Kentucky, by immersing himself in punk and hardcore. After moving to Louisville, he played with bands including National Acrobat and Breather Resist before forming the post-hardcore trio Young Widows in 2006. Following the band's 2011 album In and Out of Youth and Lightness, Patterson wanted to expand his musical repertoire. He worked with keyboardist/vocalist Jonathan Glen Wood and bassist Todd Cook in Old Baby, a band whose haunted country-rock spawned 2013's Love Hangover and 2015's New Music. In late 2013, Patterson formed Jaye Jayle as a tribute to the timeless personas of classic folk and blues artists. His trips to New Mexico to visit an ex inspired the stark songs he recorded on his phone, which he released as his 2014 debut album, It's Jayle Time! These songs were also issued as four 7"s that arrived in 2014 and 2015 on four different labels. To flesh out the project's sound for 2016's Sargent House debut, House Cricks and Other Excuses to Get Out, Patterson enlisted Wood and Cook along with two more Louisville scene veterans, Freakwater drummer Neal Argabright and multi-instrumentalist Corey Smith. After spending much of 2016 on the road, the band worked with another Sargent House artist, Emma Ruth Rundle, on 2017's split EP The Time Between Us. For the group's second album, No Trail and Other Unholy Paths, Patterson tightened up his support of Cook, Argabright, and Smith, and expanded the project's sound to include atmospheric passages and synth-driven rock as well as folk- and blues-influenced fare. Recorded by Warren Christopher Gray and produced by David Lynch's musical director and sound designer Dean Hurley, the album arrived in June 2018. The following year, Jaye Jayle released "Soline," a song recorded during the No Trail sessions that didn't make it onto the album. While on a lengthy tour, Patterson was contacted by couture designer Ashley Rose to work with Ben Chisholm and Chelsea Wolfe on the music for an upcoming fashion show. Collaborating online, Chisholm and Patterson ended up making an album's worth of moody, electronic-based tracks that Gray and Patterson turned into Jaye Jayle's fourth album, Prisyn. Delving into topics like technology's addictive qualities and the confining conservatism of Southern culture, the album appeared in August 2020. That November, the music for the Ashley Rose Couture presentation was released as My Dearest Dust. "We Stormed," another song recorded with Hurley in 2017, arrived in late 2021. Inspired by his father's love of the Beatles, Patterson issued a smoky, slow-motion cover of "Help!" in May 2022. In October, he released Prisyn: Live from Scarlet Chapel, which documented an October 2020 performance of Prisyn in its entirety.Patterson returned with new music in 2023, first with January's single "Small Dark Voices," and in July with the fifth Jaye Jayle full-length, Don't Let Your Love Life Get You Down. Created in the wake of Patterson's divorce, it combined the experimental electronics he developed with Chisholm -- who also worked on this album -- with the full-band approach of his pre-Prisyn releases. Bonnie "Prince" Billy and Patrick Shiroishi also contributed to its songs of acceptance, which fused blues and gospel with transporting synths. Later in the 2020s, Patterson reconnected with Young Widows, a reunion that resulted in tours and the 2025 album Power Sucker. That year also saw the release of Jaye Jayle's After Alter. Arriving in January, the album gathered four previously unreleased songs recorded during the making of Don't Let Your Love Life Get You Down and slightly after, and four songs Patterson had self-released (including "Help!" and "Small Dark Voices"). After Alter was co-released by Pelagic and Patterson's Future Heart Works imprint, which also published a book of his illustrations, Songs Without Words or Sound, shortly before the album appeared.
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